Shin-chan walked up to Hōzuki Sakugetsu, crouched down, and poked his face. "Can you still move? If you can't, I'm going to call someone over to drag you away."
"Who exactly are you?" Hōzuki Sakugetsu raised his head, his eyes looking as if they were about to spit fire. "With your strength, you shouldn't be unknown."
He was a genius of the Hōzuki clan, a jōnin of Kirigakure.
Someone who could so easily break through his Hydrification secret technique—how could someone like that possibly be a nobody?
The Konoha chūnin beside them finally recovered from his shock. He immediately straightened his back, his tone carrying an indescribable sense of pride.
"This is Lord Nohara Shinnosuke, the direct disciple of the Third Hokage!"
"The Hokage's disciple?" Hōzuki Sakugetsu's pupils shrank slightly.
Among the information he knew about the Third Hokage's disciples, there were only the legendary Sannin. There was no name like "Nohara Shinnosuke."
"Not only that," another Konoha ninja excitedly added, "Lord Shinnosuke graduated from the ninja academy at five years old. He is one of the youngest geniuses in Konoha's history!"
"Five years old..." The muscles on Hōzuki Sakugetsu's face twitched.
Graduated at five years old. Direct disciple of the Third Hokage. Possessing strange body-flicker techniques and sealing techniques.
And yet he had known nothing about any of this.
Hōzuki Sakugetsu lowered his head, and a thick killing intent surged in his eyes.
This boy absolutely could not be allowed to live.
The Hydrification secret technique was the foundation of the Hōzuki clan. Anyone capable of breaking that technique had to die.
If this boy was allowed to survive, the Hōzuki clan would forever be on the passive side in the future ninja world.
His fingers moved slightly, wanting to form seals, but his chakra was sealed down completely.
Shin-chan remained crouched. "I'm going to ask you a few questions."
Hōzuki Sakugetsu gave no response.
"What exactly is Kirigakure trying to do in the Land of Waves?"
Silence.
"How many of you are still in the Land of Waves?"
Silence.
"Besides your team, are there any other jōnin?"
Hōzuki Sakugetsu closed his eyes, turned his face away, and squeezed out a cold snort through his teeth.
Shin-chan rubbed his chin. "Looks like being tough won't work."
He rummaged through his ninja tool pouch for a while. Under Hōzuki Sakugetsu's wary and contemptuous gaze, he took out something long and thin.
"This is the last one." Shin-chan waved the chocolate stick in front of Hōzuki Sakugetsu. "If you tell us what Kirigakure is doing in the Land of Waves, I'll let you eat this."
The corner of Hōzuki Sakugetsu's mouth twitched violently. "Are you messing with me? What is that thing?"
"This chocolate stick is super delicious." Shin-chan's expression was extremely serious. "This is the last one. I can't even bear to eat it myself."
Hōzuki Sakugetsu's face turned from white to blue, then from blue to black.
He had been interrogated by a twelve-year-old brat with a chocolate stick.
What kind of unbearable humiliation was this?!
"Are you insulting me?" Hōzuki Sakugetsu squeezed the words out from between his teeth.
"No." Shin-chan tilted his head. "No one refuses chocolate sticks."
A vein throbbed on Hōzuki Sakugetsu's forehead.
He was a genius jōnin of the Hōzuki clan, a figure feared throughout the Land of Water!
And the brat in front of him actually dared to wave a snack back and forth in front of his face.
Just then, a figure swept out from behind the reef in the distance.
That figure was extremely fast. With a few leaps, he landed on the rocky beach, his silver hair unmistakable and a short blade slung diagonally across his back.
Hatake Kakashi.
The moment his feet touched the ground, his gaze swept across the entire rocky beach.
From the moment he saw the first Mist ninja lying on the ground, his eyes kept changing.
There were quite a few Mist ninja lying on the ground, all of them locked down by sealing techniques.
"Shin-chan?" Kakashi revealed an expression of disbelief. "You took care of all of them? Weren't you supposed to come find us?"
Shin-chan looked at Kakashi innocently and spread his hands. "They wanted to hit me, and he even said he'd tear me into pieces and throw me into the sea to feed the sharks."
As he spoke, he pointed at Hōzuki Sakugetsu, who was kneeling on the ground with a livid face. "That was too much, right?"
Kakashi followed his hand and immediately saw the black sealing formula on Hōzuki Sakugetsu's body. It was so complex that it made one's eyes dizzy.
He walked over and carefully examined it. Layers upon layers of black symbols were locked around Hōzuki Sakugetsu's body, completely imprisoning the flow of his chakra.
"A sealing technique of this level... You developed it yourself again, didn't you? You really do like creating formulas people can't understand."
He could not understand the structure of this formula at all, which meant that it far exceeded the current scope of his knowledge.
Shin-chan inserted his kunai back into his ninja tool pouch. "Oh, right, Kakashi. Do you know this ninja called Hōzuki Sakugetsu?"
"Hōzuki Sakugetsu." Kakashi withdrew his gaze. "A jōnin of Kirigakure, a core member of the Hōzuki clan. Kirigakure's operation in the Land of Waves this time was most likely led by him."
"He's that amazing?" Shin-chan's mouth opened wide.
"You captured him alive, then called him amazing?" Kakashi glanced at him. "Can you think for a moment about how that sounds coming from your mouth?"
Hōzuki Sakugetsu's eyes looked ready to spit fire from where he knelt on the ground.
"But core member and all that sounds really impressive."
Kakashi shook his head and continued adding, "He spent two years in Kirigakure's assassination unit before being transferred back to the regular forces. The reason for the transfer was..."
"What was it?" Shin-chan couldn't help asking.
"He was too flashy," Kakashi said. "The assassination unit requires people to act discreetly. Every time he completed a mission, he insisted on leaving his name behind. It didn't meet regulations."
Hōzuki Sakugetsu heard his own history being listed out one item at a time, and the corner of his mouth curled into a cold smile. "Konoha's intelligence network is quite complete."
"For someone at your level, of course Konoha would have records." Kakashi turned to the Konoha ninja beside him. "These are extremely important captives, especially him. He must be watched closely."
"Yes!" The surrounding Konoha ninja immediately straightened their backs.
The way they looked at Shin-chan could no longer be described as reverence.
It was practically awe.
A jōnin of the Hōzuki clan had been casually taken care of by a twelve-year-old boy as a "sticky bad guy."
This was basically a walking humanoid weapon that looked like a child on the outside, but whose strength was far beyond ordinary people.
After Shin-chan and Kakashi left, the Konoha ninja all let out a sigh at the same time.
They had struggled and stumbled along the path of a ninja, surviving who knew how many life-or-death missions before barely managing to become chūnin.
But Hatake Kakashi and Uchiha Toru were only twelve years old, and it was said that they would be promoted to jōnin before long.
Lord Shinnosuke's strength was also absurdly powerful.
One ninja lowered his voice and said, "When I was twelve, I had just graduated from the ninja academy."
Compared to them, they were simply people from completely different worlds.
~~~
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